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Hello, Members!
Welcome to the month of the 2023 IWAS Wheelchair Fencing World Championships and 2023 FIE Veteran Fencing World Championships!
That’s right, this month features two World Championships. Our parafencing team has begun competition in Terni, Italy (close to Rome), to compete on their journey to the Paralympic Games. And next week, our world-beating Veterans will be defending their medal count win from Zadar 2022 — this time on home soil at Vet Worlds in Daytona Beach.
I’m thrilled to say that this year, there are more of you reading this message because membership is up 18% year on year. We’re approaching the 600-club mark, registrations for regionals are up, and we’re seeing high numbers of October and November NAC registrations. Fencing is very much alive and well in the United States!
New fencing families will have seen new onboarding journeys rolled out last month. These are designed to help both parents and clubs learn to navigate competitive fencing. If these prove successful, we’ll seek to roll out this “welcome series” model to other stakeholder groups.
It seems everywhere I go folks are talking about expanding our NCAA presence, and that’s certainly a big focal point for us. Last season, we added Wheaton College, and we’re reasonably close to adding two or three schools in the Carolinas and Virginia. With that said, we’d dearly like to add a Western college, but this is proving much harder because of the added travel cost and, of course, lower numbers of schools out West. Those schools most interested in adding fencing are seeking net enrollment back to the school.
Two athletic directors from western schools were among those who attended our season-opening reception in support of the U.S. Fencing Foundation last month. It was a wonderful evening, and I extend my thanks to Foundation Trustees Lilly Huang and Selina Kaing, as well as Alex Massialas OLY, Sabrina Massialas OLY as well as the M Team family. It was great to connect with a number of our Bay Area community both at the reception and elsewhere.
We cannot forget the other side of college fencing: collegiate clubs. While many colleges unfortunately don’t view their club program as a testing ground for a varsity program, these programs provide opportunities for folks to find fencing for the first time in college as well as provide opportunities to continue to fence for those who are not in NCAA programs. We’ve been thrilled to advance discussions with the USACFC on how we best work to support collegiate clubs.
Toward the end of the month, we’ll convene in Orlando for the October NAC, and you’ll see a familiar NAC layout but with a bunch of new branding thanks to our partnerships with Naked Wines, Avenues Online, Ropes and Gray LLP, Gallagher, CollegeVine and others. We appreciate your support of our partners. It’s critical for us to continue to expand these areas.
We recognize the challenges posed to some of our members by having a tournament in Florida, and we’ll have resources available at our registration desk for anyone who feels unsafe at the event.
Meanwhile, away from the field of play, we are working on the 2024-28 strategic plan, which for the first time includes feedback from the entire membership. It was then crafted further by the Board, Foundation Trustees and key committee chairs at this year’s board retreat in early September, kindly supported by Denver Sports and Visit Denver. As soon as it’s ready, we’ll share a more detailed breakdown of the plan, which will guide the organization through the year 2028.
During that weekend, we welcomed a new Chair of USA Fencing, Ivan Lee OLY, a new treasurer, Emily Bian, and a new special board member, Mike Joo. I look forward to working with each of them closely to advance USA Fencing.
We’ll see many of you in Daytona Beach or Orlando shortly, but otherwise please hit reply if we can support you in any way!
Warm regards,
Phil
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